Here's Exactly How Much Alcohol You Can Drink If You Want to Keep Your Heart Healthy

You’re probably aware that drinking alcohol can have certain short-term and long-term effects on your health.

In the short term, there’s the hangover effect. If you overindulge one night, you might wake up the next morning with some nausea, a pounding headache, dry mouth, etc. Over time, however, chronic drinking can take a toll on your body, too. For example, consider your liver. According to the American Liver Foundation, excessive alcohol consumption over time can lead to alcoholic liver disease or alcohol-related liver disease, of which there are three kinds: fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis.

But your heart’s not immune to alcohol, either. Here’s everything you need to know about alcohol and your heart rate.

Alcohol and Your Heart Rate A 2020 Cochrane review looked at 32 randomized clinical trials of alcohol’s effect on blood pressure and heart rate. The researchers found that high doses of alcohol—that is, more than 30 grams within six hours—could decrease a person’s blood pressure but raise their heart rate. And in fact, alcohol could increase heart rate for up to 24 hours in some situations. (Most of the patients in these studies were healthy young males, it should be pointed out.).

“It means your heart is working harder,” explains Dr. Leslie Cho, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Women’s Cardiovascular Center.

When you exercise, you’re getting your heart rate up, and that’s a good thing. But it’s only for a short amount of time, and then your heart rate comes back down again. But if you do something that keeps your heart rate elevated, it means your heart is working harder than it usually is, which can lead to problems down the road, says Dr. Cho.

Alcohol use can also lead to an increased risk for a condition known as atrial fibrillation, or AFib. Atrial fibrillation occurs when the upper two chambers of your heart beat irregularly, or quiver, instead of beating in a normal pattern and moving blood into the bottom chambers. More than 2.7 million people in the U.S. have a fib, according to the American Heart Association.

Long-term alcohol use can also lead to alcoholic cardiomyopathy, says Dr. Raul Mitrani, MD, a cardiologist with the University of Miami Health System. Cardiomyopathy occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump blood well, and sometimes the heart’s rhythm can get disturbed, too.

All In Moderation—but What Does Moderation Really Mean? You may have heard that drinking certain kinds of alcohol, like red wine, could have heart-healthy benefits. But the American Heart Association cautions that, “No research has proved a cause-and-effect link between drinking alcohol and better heart health.”

“People love the idea of alcohol protecting against heart problems,” says Dr. Cho. But, she emphasizes, they need to stick with moderate alcohol consumption only.

“Underline the word ‘moderate’ and bold and italicize it,” she says.

You may already be open to the idea of sticking to moderate consumption of alcohol in the name of cardiovascular health (among others). But you might wonder what that really means—that is, what moderate alcohol consumption looks like in practical terms.

It might be less (or maybe more) than you might think. The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that men limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks (or fewer) per day. For women, the recommended limit is one drink (or fewer) per day.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one drink is equivalent to one of the following:

12 ounces of beer (5% ABV)

8 ounces of malt liquor (7% ABV)

5 ounces of wine (12% ABV)

1.5 ounces of distilled spirits (40% ABV or 80 proof).

Just to clarify: that’s one choice from those four options. Not all of them or even one from each category.

And that’s only for people who drink alcohol at all. “We do not recommend that you take up alcohol,” says Dr. Cho. “Alcohol is empty calories, for the most part. It can also make you gain weight.”

As the dietary guidelines point out, “Emerging evidence suggests that even drinking within the recommended limits may increase the overall risk of death from various causes, such as from several types of cancer and some forms of cardiovascular disease.”

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And if you have certain pre-existing conditions, you might want to seriously evaluate how alcohol fits in your life. “If I have patients with atrial fibrillation, I try to get them to abstain or to limit their alcohol consumption to three drinks or fewer per week,” says Dr. Mitrani.

If you don’t have any other complicating health factors but you’re still over the “moderate” line, it may also be worth considering why you’re drinking as much as you are–and if other coping mechanisms might be a better choice. Many people started drinking a little more frequently (or consuming more alcohol) as the pandemic got underway as a coping mechanism. And even when there’s not a pandemic going on, some people choose to drink to relax or to decrease their anxiety. That might even describe you.

But changing your behavior or embracing other ways to unwind may be more effective and carry less risk, says Dr. Cho. Meditation, exercise, or talking to a professional might be more effective than a few drinks at helping you feel less anxious or nervous. And that might wind up being healthier for your heart, too.